Hasil untuk "Agriculture"

C. Pittelkow, Xin-qiang Liang, B. Linquist et al.

T. Garnett, M. Appleby, A. Balmford et al.

Chunhua Zhang, J. Kovacs

K. Giller, E. Witter, M. Corbeels et al.

J. Morton

J. Pretty

Edoardo Greppi

S. Knapp, M. V. D. van der Heijden

One of the primary challenges of our time is to enhance global food production and security. Most assessments in agricultural systems focus on plant yield. Yet, these analyses neglect temporal yield stability, or the variability and reliability of production across years. Here we perform a meta-analysis to assess temporal yield stability of three major cropping systems: organic agriculture and conservation agriculture (no-tillage) vs. conventional agriculture, comparing 193 studies based on 2896 comparisons. Organic agriculture has, per unit yield, a significantly lower temporal stability (−15%) compared to conventional agriculture. Thus, although organic farming promotes biodiversity and is generally more environmentally friendly, future efforts should focus on reducing its yield variability. Our analysis further indicates that the use of green manure and enhanced fertilisation can reduce the yield stability gap between organic and conventional agriculture. The temporal stability (−3%) of no-tillage does not differ significantly from those of conventional tillage indicating that a transition to no-tillage does not affect yield stability. Yields vary between different cropping systems, though their temporal stability has not been quantified. Here, Knapp and van der Heijden present a meta-analysis showing that yields in organic agriculture have, per unit food produced, a lower temporal stability.

V. Seufert, N. Ramankutty

The performance of organic agriculture includes some benefits, some costs, and many uncertainties. Organic agriculture is often proposed as a more sustainable alternative to current conventional agriculture. We assess the current understanding of the costs and benefits of organic agriculture across multiple production, environmental, producer, and consumer dimensions. Organic agriculture shows many potential benefits (including higher biodiversity and improved soil and water quality per unit area, enhanced profitability, and higher nutritional value) as well as many potential costs including lower yields and higher consumer prices. However, numerous important dimensions have high uncertainty, particularly the environmental performance when controlling for lower organic yields, but also yield stability, soil erosion, water use, and labor conditions. We identify conditions that influence the relative performance of organic systems, highlighting areas for increased research and policy support.

Eva‐Marie Meemken, M. Qaim

Organic agriculture is often perceived as more sustainable than conventional farming. We review the literature on this topic from a global perspective. In terms of environmental and climate change effects, organic farming is less polluting than conventional farming when measured per unit of land but not when measured per unit of output. Organic farming, which currently accounts for only 1% of global agricultural land, is lower yielding on average. Due to higher knowledge requirements, observed yield gaps might further increase if a larger number of farmers would switch to organic practices. Widespread upscaling of organic agriculture would cause additional loss of natural habitats and also entail output price increases, making food less affordable for poor consumers in developing countries. Organic farming is not the paradigm for sustainable agriculture and food security, but smart combinations of organic and conventional methods could contribute toward sustainable productivity increases in global agriculture.

Mehdi Ben Jebli, S. B. Youssef

J. Pretty, Z. Bharucha

Pretty and Bharucha present pathways to sustainable agroecosystems, arguing that agriculture will have to be intensified but this can be achieved without environmental and social harm. In other words, sustainable intensification is possible and the book seeks to outline means for achieving this, drawing on case studies, with a particular focus on smallholders in the developing world. It provides an authoritative and well-argued case for sustainable intensification.

S. Prathibha, Anupama Hongal, M. Jyothi

M. Shepherd, J. Turner, B. Small et al.

Abstract The world needs to produce more food, more sustainably, on a planet with scarce resources and under changing climate. The advancement of technologies, computing power and analytics offers the possibility that ‘digitalisation of agriculture’ can provide new solutions to these complex challenges. The role of science is to evidence and support the design and use of digital technologies to realise these beneficial outcomes and avoid unintended consequences. This requires consideration of data governance design to enable the benefits of digital agriculture to be shared equitably and how digital agriculture could change agricultural business models; that is, farm structures, the value chain and stakeholder roles, networks and power relations, and governance. We argue that this requires transdisciplinary research (at pace), including explicit consideration of the aforementioned socio‐ethical issues, data governance and business models, alongside addressing technical issues, as we now have to simultaneously deal with multiple interacting outcomes in complex technical, social, economic and governance systems. The exciting prospect is that digitalisation of science can enable this new, and more effective, way of working. The question then becomes: how can we effectively accelerate this shift to a new way of working in agricultural science? As well as identifying key research areas, we suggest organisational changes will be required: new research business models, agile project management; new skills and capabilities; and collaborations with new partners to develop ‘technology ecosystems’. © 2018 The Authors. © 2018 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

D. Glover, J. Sumberg, G. Ton et al.

The concept of technology adoption (along with its companions, diffusion and scaling) is commonly used to design development interventions, to frame impact evaluations and to inform decision-making about new investments in development-oriented agricultural research. However, adoption simplifies and mischaracterises what happens during processes of technological change. In all but the very simplest cases, it is likely to be inadequate to capture the complex reconfiguration of social and technical components of a technological practice or system. We review the insights of a large and expanding literature, from various disciplines, which has deepened understanding of technological change as an intricate and complex sociotechnical reconfiguration, situated in time and space. We explain the problems arising from the inappropriate use of adoption as a framing concept and propose an alternative conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating technological change. The new approach breaks down technology change programmes into four aspects: propositions, encounters, dispositions and responses. We begin to sketch out how this new framework could be operationalised.

N. Pedrol, C. Puig, P. Souza-Alonso et al.

The journal Organic Agriculture offers a mixture of original refereed research papers which bring you some of the most exciting developments in sustainable agriculture and food systems often with an interor trans-disciplinary perspective. The journal also includes invited critical reviews on topical issues, and overviews of the status of organic agriculture in particular regions/countries. The journal covers the principles and practice of organic agriculture and food systems taking a broad view of the subject area and is also encouraging papers which provide a critique or challenge to current standards or practices. According to the definition given by the IFOAM (March 2008), organic agriculture is a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems and people. It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects. Organic agriculture combines tradition, innovation and science to benefit the shared environment and promote fair relationships and a good quality of life for all involved. The journal Organic Agriculture takes IFOAM's definition of organic agriculture stated above as the focus of its Aims and Scope, and consequently will accept papers which report studies that are carried out within certified organic farming systems, where the system uses the methods of organic agriculture based on the IFOAM principles http:// www.ifoam.org/about_ifoam/principles/index.html. To address the challenges of developing sustainable food and farming systems, the journal seeks contributions which probe the technical and socio-economic constraints to productivity, market and system development, policy and governance. High quality research work in organic farming systems is often under-represented in the published literature and the journal particularly welcomes contributions which cannot be easily linked to a single disciplinary interest. Both the system under study and the approaches taken to its study will be considered by the Editors to determine the suitability of the paper for review. Authors should refer carefully to the full Aims and Scope of the Journal before submitting their papers. Organic Agriculture is the official journal of the International Society of Organic Agriculture Research. ISOFAR was launched in 2003 and seeks to promote, encourage and support research in all areas of Organic Farming by facilitating global co-operation in research, methodological development, education and knowledge exchange. Organic Agriculture is published quarterly (March, June, September, December).

Gideon Abagna Azunre, O. Amponsah, C. Peprah et al.

Abstract The debate on the role of urban agriculture in the sustainable city discourse remains unresolved in the conventional literature. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to review relevant literature to clarify the role of urban agriculture in sustainable cities. The search for literature was guided by themes such as: a) urban agricultural practices, b) indicators for the measurement of sustainable cities, c) economic, social and environmental benefits of urban agriculture, and d) negative effects of urban agriculture on the city. The results from a synthesis of the literature indicate that urban agriculture supports the economic, social and environmental sustainability of cities. However, if the discussion gives credence to only the economic dimension of sustainability, then urban agriculture loses the debate. This is because the economic benefits of prime city land that is used used for non-agricultural purposes (such as commercial or industrial) is profound. However, the social and environmental functions of responsible urban agriculture, particularly in reducing the rift between urbanisation and nature, may be difficult to quantify. These social and environmental functions underscore the importance of urban agriculture in the city landscape. The paper concludes by arguing that focussing on only economic sustainability in the urban agriculture-sustainable city discourse is a travesty of the idea of sustainable development. The paper presents practical steps that can be taken to preserve agriculture in cities towards their sustainability.

R. Rupnik, M. Kukar, Petar Vračar et al.

Abstract Decision support systems, data analysis and data mining have become significant tools for improving business in professional world. The emerging technologies are making the precision agriculture omnipresent and allow potential for enriching it with computer-assisted decision support systems for farm management. In this paper we describe a novel system AgroDSS that bridges the gap between agricultural systems and state-of-the-art decision support methodology. The described system is intended for integration into the existing farm management information systems and provides a cloud-based decision support toolbox, allowing farmers to upload their own data, utilize several data analysis methods and retrieve their outputs. The implemented tools include predictive modeling with explanation, accuracy evaluation, time series clustering and decomposition, and structural change detection. They can help users make predictions for simulated scenarios and better understand the dependencies (interactions) within their domain. We apply the AgroDSS system on a case study of pest population dynamics, illustrating the potential for its use.

L. Hang, Israr Ullah, Do-Hyeun Kim

Abstract Internet of Things (IoT) has opened up a new dimension for smart farming and agriculture because of the natural feature that makes it possible to assign tasks made by a user or that transfers agriculture data obtained through sensors to producers for analysis on various terminal devices. In recent years, heightened interest in agriculture data has arisen since the commercialization of precision agriculture technology. Agriculture data are known to be messy, especially from combine yield monitors, and analysts are concerned with the validity of data, especially given that other people may have impacted data quality at various steps along the data path. The blockchain can be a possible solution to the analyst’s problem of uncertain data quality from prior data manipulation since it ensures data have not been inappropriately manipulated or at the very least documents what changes have been made by specific individuals. This paper proposes a blockchain-based fish farm platform to ensure agriculture data integrity. The designed platform aims to provide fish farmers with secure storage for preserving the large amounts of agriculture data that cannot be tampered with. Diverse processes of the fish farm are executed automatically by using the smart contract to reduce the risk of error or manipulation. A proof of concept that integrates a legacy fish farm system with the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain is implemented on top of the proposed architecture. The efficiency and usability of the proposed platform are demonstrated through a series of experiments using various metrics.

SHIVANI, SANJEEV KUMAR, KUMARI SHUBHA et al.

A field experiment was conducted for three consecutive years during 2019–20, 2020–21 and 2021–22 at ICAR-Research Complex for Eastern Region, Patna, Bihar to assess the best and profitable rice (Oryza sativa L.) based cropping system through crop diversification for sustainable agriculture. Diversification of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) with rabi vegetables and inclusion of green gram (Vigna radiata L.) during summer season in rice-wheat cropping system was studied with rice cultivars of different duration. The rice-cauliflower (Brassica oleracea var. botrytis)-spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.)-green gram system recorded the highest system productivity with a rice equivalent yield of 34.26 t/ha, followed by the rice-broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italica)-spring onion (Allium fistulosum)-green gram system (32.47 t/ha) which were more than double as compared to rice-wheat-green gram system (12.29 t/ha). Land use efficiency was recorded maximum in rice-tomato (Solanum lycopersicum)-green gram system (95.34%) and minimum in rice-garden pea (Pisum sativum L.)-green gram system (82.19%). Growing shorter duration rice cultivar (Swarna Shreya) in the cropping systems significantly enhanced the system productivity, system production efficiency and income as compared to longer duration rice variety in different cropping systems. Diversification of wheat with rabi vegetables enhanced the gross return, net return and benefit cost ratio irrespective of rice duration. The cropping intensity was also increased by diversifying wheat with cauliflower and broccoli grown after short duration rice (400%), as it provided an opportunity to grow a short span crop in the rabi season itself before sowing of green gram during summer season.